The gap between online journalism education and practice

Presented by Ying Du and Ryan Thornburg to the 2010 AEJMC conference in Denver.
The gap between journalism education and journalism practice has long been the focus of debates in the field. Amid the emergence of online journalism in the 1990s, the profession's criticism of journalism education has continued unabated. It is ever important to revisit the old “gap” issue in this new context. This study attempts to examine the discordance between education and practice by comparing online journalism professionals and educators’ perceptions of key skills, concepts, and duties for online journalism. Findings of the twin surveys suggest that differences do exist in the online context.

Search engine 2.94 Video reporting and/or 3.17

10 optimization editingSurvey question for instructors: “Please tell us the proficiency level you think your students shouldhave for each of these skills if they work for online newsrooms”Survey Question for Journalists: “Please tell us the proficiency level you have for each of theseskills.”

Survey question for instructors: “Select and rank the top 10 duties you think your students willperform the most often during the first year of their professional careers.”Survey Question for Journalists: “Select and rank the top 10 duties you spent your work time on.”10-point forced choice scale: 1 = most important, 2 = second most important…

What concepts are most valued for online journalism?

Table 4 shows how instructors and journalists ranked the value placed on various

concepts in online newsrooms. Educators and journalists both ranked “online community

management” the least important concept for online newsrooms among all the 10

presented in the questionnaires. The professional ranked "multitasking" as the most

valuable concept, but instructors ranked it 7th. On the other side, educators said they

thought the most important concept for their students to have in online newsrooms is

“news judgment (5th by journalists).”

Both groups rank the “ability to work under pressure” and “ability to learn new

technologies" as two of their respective five most valued concepts in online newsrooms.

The professionals seemed to value “attention to detail” more that the educators, whereas

the educators seemed to value “team work/collaboration” and “interpersonal

communication” more than the professionals. Of all the concepts on the list, perhaps one

of the most difficult to simulate in the topically focused environment of many journalism

classes is "multitasking" – and it's the concept on which the two groups differ the most. It

seems one of the best ways for journalism students to prepare for working in the field of

journalism may not be any single class they take, but their ability to manage many classes

7 Multitasking 5.49 Web usability 5.29

Awareness of new 5.92 Interpersonal 5.91

8 technologies communication Web usability 7.25 Awareness of new 6.61 9 technologies Online community 7.77 Online community 6.86 10 management managementSurvey question for instructors: “Rank the concepts in the order in which you think they areimportant to your students’ future job in online newsrooms.”Survey Question for Journalists: “Rank the concepts in the order in which they are important toyour job.”10-point forced choice scale: 1 = most important…10 = least important

Tests of difference

1 Based on the results of previous research, this study proposed a general

hypothesis that there are differences in the perceptions of online journalism

instructors and online journalists regarding the skills, duties, and concepts for

online journalism. A series of t-tests were conducted to explore the statistical

differences between the journalists and the instructors.

As Table 5 illustrates, significant differences exist in seven of the 18 skill

Writing summary content for the 4.14 3.98 1.00 0.32

Video reporting and/or editing 3.37 3.17 1.17 0.25

HTML 2.66 3.20 -2.88 0.01**

Photoshop 2.91 3.44 -2.85 0.01**

Soundslides 3.09 2.65 1.86 0.07

My company’s content management 3.15 4.00 -4.14 <0.01**

systemSurvey question for instructors: “Please tell us the proficiency level you think your students shouldhave for each of these skills if they work for online newsrooms”Survey Question for Journalists: “Please tell us the proficiency level you have for each of theseskills.”5-point forced choice scale: 1 = none, 2 = basic, 3 = intermediate, 4 = advance, 5 = expert* significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).** significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

As for duties, as Table 6 illustrates, significant differences exist in four of

the duties - staff organization/administration, video production,

information/graphic design, and user interface design. On average, it seems in

reality the journalists are working on these duties more often than the instructors

Editing text for content 5.15 5.32 -0.24 0.81

Managing user-generated content 5.43 5.78 -0.44 0.66

Editing for grammar or style 5.67 5.27 0.49 0.63

Writing headlines or blurbs 5.21 5.22 -0.01 0.99

Developing and managing 7.67 5.50 1.71 0.10

relationships with third-party content providers Training or teaching other staff 6.75 6.32 0.50 0.62 members in new skills or concepts Story combining/shortening 4.45 4.71 -0.22 0.83

Photo/image editing 5.67 4.95 1.06 0.29

Photo shooting 5.91 4.33 1.00 0.32

Audio production 6.02 6.71 -0.82 0.42

Video production 5.74 4.35 2.18 0.03*

Information/graphic design 7.50 5.29 2.60 0.02*

User interface design 7.57 4.33 2.57 0.02*

Other duties 7.70 5.43 1.92 0.07

Survey question for instructors: “Select and rank the top 10 duties you think your students willperform the most often during the first year of their professional careers.”Survey Question for Journalists: “Select and rank the top 10 duties you spent your work time on.”10-point forced choice scale: 1 = most important, 2 = second most important…* significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).** significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

Online community management 7.77 6.86 1.52 0.14

Ability to work under time 4.55 4.83 -0.55 0.58

Multitasking 5.49 4.14 2.37 0.02*

Team work/collaboration 4.70 5.15 -0.90 0.37

Ability to learn new technologies 5.04 4.49 1.07 0.29

Awareness of new technologies 5.92 6.61 -1.22 0.23

News judgment 2.92 5.15 -3.45 <0.01**

Web usability 7.25 5.29 3.57 <0.01**

Survey question for instructors: “Rank the concepts in the order in which you think they areimportant to your students’ future job in online newsrooms.”Survey Question for Journalists: “Rank the concepts in the order in which they are important toyour job.”10-point forced choice scale: 1 = most important…10 = least important* significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).** significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

This study found evidence of significant differences between professional

journalists’ and journalism educators’ perceptions on the key skills, duties, and concepts

for online journalism. Hypothesis 1 is supported.

2 The results of this study suggest that journalism schools need to do more to teach